Pastor Jimmy
Feb 8, 2026
I'm a firm believer that you can't make your heart feel something it doesn't. Your heart can only respond to what it genuinely views as good and beautiful. That's why we're going through the book of John. John portrays Jesus more intimately than any other book in the Bible because John was one of Jesus' closest friends. He was in the inner three: Peter, James, and John.
My hope every Sunday isn't that you leave with a practical action step on how to live a better life. More than any of that, I'm interested in us walking out of the room saying, I love Jesus more. I think he's more beautiful than I did walking in.
So with that, we're in John chapter 7.
A Little Context
In John 6, Jesus multiplied bread for the 5,000, calmed a storm, and then said, "I am the bread of life. You need to eat me." People were like, this guy's a cannibal. A lot of disciples left him, and only the core disciples remained. That's how we get to John 7.
Jesus' brothers come to him and basically say, "Leave the countryside and go to Judea. Do something real. Show yourself to the world." Because even his own brothers didn't believe in him yet. And I don't know if you knew this, but Mary and Joseph had other kids after Jesus. He had literal brothers and sisters, and they were telling him to go prove himself.
But Jesus says no. He tells them, "My time is not yet here." Then, after his brothers leave for the Festival of Tabernacles, he goes too, but in secret. For three days during this seven-day festival, he just hides. Then he starts teaching, and the crowd is confused. Some say he's a good man, others say he's a deceiver. The religious leaders are trying to arrest him. People are asking questions, and Jesus isn't giving them clean answers.
He's kind of a troll in this passage. His brothers ask him to perform signs. Nah. Will you teach? Nah. Three days later? Okay, now I'll teach. And then what he teaches is weird and abstract and hard to follow. It begs the question: why does God make it so hard to believe in him?
When the Highs Fade
Growing up in the church, I had the prototypical story. I was a little punk messing around, then I met the Holy Spirit, got blasted, and our youth group was on fire. Our services would go two hours past the adult service. All the moms were mad. We'd come out of the room, all twelve of us just bawling, and the adults were like, "Did he abuse you?" They were so confused. We were just on fire for God.
Then, if I can be honest, ten years later I watched almost all of my friends walk away from Jesus.
I saw people who literally got slain on the altar. We once ate lunch around a friend's body on the ground because during prayer time he just collapsed and our youth pastor, who was only three years older than us, was like, "I don't know what to do. He's talking to God right now." So we set up lunch tables around him. In the middle of our meal, he woke up and said he went to heaven and saw Jesus.
Even him, who had that powerful of an experience, eventually went back to his old life.
How did that happen? Why does God make it so hard?
I've been very angry with God in recent years. So many of my former friends who were on fire, who were great leaders, walked away and no longer consider themselves believers. So many of my former church members and students walked away. And what I realized was this: so many of our relationships with God are built on the highs.
I think the reason God doesn't make it easy to believe in him is because a relationship can be built on the highs, but it's actually strengthened in the lows.
A lot of us are addicted to easy believism, where God feels good, God blesses us, and it's simple to follow him. But in the difficult moments, we haven't had much training in resilience.
Think about marriage vows. In sickness and in health. In riches and in poverty. In good times and in bad. A marriage with vows that only include the positives is probably not going to last. "I vow to stay with you in riches, in health, and in good times only. But as soon as we lose the bag, as soon as you get sick, as soon as I don't feel it anymore, we're out." If you heard that at a wedding, you'd be like, yeah, this isn't going to last.
Yet we never apply that same principle to our relationship with God.
Can You Still Believe Without Clarity?
Last week, I had to change my sermon at 2 a.m. because I originally had this great message about how if you have faith, God will multiply. I'd preached that sermon hundreds of times in my twenties. But as I was praying about it, it just didn't sit right with me anymore. Because I don't actually believe in that the way I used to.
We've been to mission fields where God didn't multiply for them. They experienced loss. They experienced grief. And for us, American missionaries, to show up and say, "If you just believe, God will answer your prayers," was embarrassing. Because they'd look at us and say, "I do believe, even though he didn't come through." Their faith was deeper than mine.
What I realized about John 6 is that the beauty of that chapter isn't the feeding of the 5,000 or the calming of the storm. It's at the end, when all the disciples walk away and Peter is the only one who says, "Lord, you have the words of life." He's saying, "Jesus, I've got nothing else. Doesn't matter if you feed me or calm the storms. Doesn't matter if there are no more miracles. I'm still with you. You are my life."
John 6 teaches us: can you still believe without the miracles? John 7 takes it further: can you still believe without the clarity?
Sometimes clarity itself becomes addicting. And what Jesus is saying in this season is, when your understanding of who I am gets rocked, when your theology feels a little destroyed, can you still believe?
There's a phenomenon of deconstruction where people who grew up in the church got fed black and white answers. This is wrong, this is right. And then as we get older, we realize life isn't black and white. It's gray. And a lot of people start walking away because they're not sure what they can believe anymore.
John 7 is asking: can your faith surpass understanding?
The Feast of Tabernacles
To understand what's happening here, you need some historical context. The Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot, was a celebration remembering how God walked with Israel through the desert for forty years after freeing them from slavery in Egypt. During the festival, everyone would travel to Jerusalem, line the streets with temporary huts made from branches and leaves, and live in them for seven days. It was a remembrance of what their ancestors endured and how God led them through.
Jesus' brothers wanted him to go to Jerusalem, the big city, and perform signs there. Galilee was the countryside. Think of it like Alabama versus New York City. His brothers were saying, nobody's going to take this movement seriously if you only operate in the boonies. Go to Times Square and reveal yourself.
They believed certainty meant legitimacy. They wanted a political revolution, a national rebellion. But Jesus kept resisting that.
And here's the thing that's easy to miss: the Feast of Tabernacles is six months after Passover. Between John 6 and John 7, Jesus let all of his disciples walk away and did nothing for six months. He let it marinate. He didn't want people to love him only when things were going well.
Broken Theology
When Jesus finally does start teaching at the festival, the people in Jerusalem say, "We know where this man is from. When the Messiah comes, no one will know where he's from."
Here's what's wild. That teaching isn't even in the Old Testament. It came from rabbis who made stuff up during the 450 years of silence between the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament actually says the Messiah will come from Bethlehem, which is exactly where Jesus was born.
It reminds me of people who grew up in the church but never really read the Bible and just got their theology secondhand. For the longest time, I believed in all kinds of Christianese superstitions. How many of you have heard the phrase, "God helps those who help themselves"? That's not a Bible verse. That's from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. He wasn't even a Christian. His friend Jonathan Edwards, who was a famous revivalist preacher, kept trying to convert him, and Franklin was like, nah.
For years I thought grace would come upon me if I worked really hard. That's actually the opposite of what grace means. Grace means you don't do it. It's all God.
I had to unlearn so much broken theology I picked up from well-meaning people who just said whatever sounded right.
When I was little, I thought it was so ironic that God would market himself as a father. I was like, who's your director of marketing? Terrible PR. Don't you know dads have a bad reputation in our generation? When I first heard a sermon on God as our Father, my thought was, so he's gonna leave me. I'm not saying that for pity. Me and my friends were the fatherless club. None of us had dads growing up. So when God said he was my Father, I assumed I had to earn his affection, be interesting and impressive, someone he could be proud of. And if I wasn't, he was just going to leave. Because that's what my dad did.
I had such a broken view of who God is. And honestly, what might matter more than how God actually views you is how you think God views you. Because your perception turns into your reality.
Stop Judging by Appearances
Jesus tells the crowd, "Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly."
Many of us have our own definitions of what "good" looks like, what "blessing" means. But Jesus is saying your judgment of what is good is flawed.
My mom is prediabetic, but she loves sugar. She's always asking to go get dessert. My temptation is to just make her happy. Let's go get ice cream. But because I actually love her, I have to discern what's good for her. "How about we eat some apples?" She's like, I hate you.
My daughter Shiloh sometimes says, "Appa, I want to cut the vegetables. Give me a knife." If I want to be the fun dad, sure, here you go. But she'd chop up all her fingers. If I'm truly a loving father, I have to say no, even when she doesn't understand why.
God is saying the same thing. You're asking for certainty, for signs, for breakthroughs. And sometimes those aren't what's actually good for you. Can you trust that he's judging what is right for your life, even when you can't understand it right now?
Can you suspend your own definitions of how God needs to move?
I have such a big problem with certain Christians who are just so certain about everything. They think they know all the truth. And you know what I've realized? They have no room for mystery. Faith was never for people who had all the answers. It was for people who said, maybe I don't know. Maybe I'm no better than anyone else. But I know Jesus. Would you be with me, God?
Living Water
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them." John tells us he was talking about the Holy Spirit.
Here's some basic theology. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit could never enter within people because humans were considered unclean. The Spirit would only rest upon them. That's why in Psalm 51, after David commits a terrible sin, he prays, "Take not your Spirit from me." Because in the Old Testament, the Spirit would come and go based on a person's righteousness.
But Jesus is saying something radically different. He's saying, there's coming a time when I'm going to die on the cross, and my sacrifice won't be temporary or superficial. It's going to cleanse from deep within. And when the Holy Spirit sees you after that, he won't see someone unclean that he has to leave when they mess up. He'll see someone made perfectly whole. And he will come inside and make his home within you. He will stay.
That is the greatest promise I could ever ask for.
The Memory That Changed Everything
In college, my family was very broken. I was going through inner healing, going to therapy, and my therapist started asking about my childhood. All of these repressed memories started coming up, and I got really bitter.
God, why did you deal me the worst hand? A father who left every year. A mom who was anxious and overbearing. A family that was broke. You gave me a pretty cool sister, but then she went to college and I was alone. What the heck, God? Why does everything suck?
I expected him to reconcile my family. He never did. My dad died, and he wasn't a Christian. So I don't know where he is. And believing in Jesus meant I had to accept the possibility that my dad is in hell. God never gave me certainty. Never gave me answers. Never fixed my family.
And then, sitting in my dorm room, a repressed memory surfaced. The Holy Spirit took me on memory lane.
I was five years old, living in a small apartment in Glendale. My dad had his pattern of leaving for a year, coming home, everything being good for a week, and then the fighting starting again. One day it boiled over. My dad pushed my mom. Behind her was the space heater. She fell on it, and it burned her, and she screamed. And my dad, classic narcissist, started blaming her.
My sister grabbed me, ran us into the other room, closed the door, put her hands over my ears, and started singing worship songs over me.
In that memory, I was watching the scene almost in third person. Five-year-old me and my sister. And I said, Holy Spirit, why are you showing me this? It's making me angry. You're just reminding me of how hard my life was and how much you didn't come through.
And then I saw something. The Holy Spirit, ministering to my sister. Coming around five-year-old me. It reminded me of that scene in the Chronicles of Narnia where the boy asks Aslan to heal his mother, falls on his knees crying, and even though she doesn't get healed, he sees even bigger tears than his own. He sees Aslan crying too.
In that moment, I felt the Holy Spirit enter the depths of my soul and begin to pray for my inner child. Years of resentment. Years of bitterness. Years of insecurity, of feeling like I had to earn people's love by being interesting and funny and remarkable because my parents could never love me, because my father was never around. All of it started to get healed.
God didn't suddenly make me more confident or more secure. He ministered to my inner child. And I realized: I don't need certainty. I don't need answers. I need the Holy Spirit to become like living water inside my soul. I need him to heal me so that yes, I may face uncertainty, yes, I don't know what God is doing in my life, but I know that he is with me.
The Promise That Matters Most
The greatest promise you could have is not that he will multiply. Not that he will calm the storm. Not that he will answer all your questions. Not that he will make himself certain to you.
Why does God sometimes make it hard to believe in him? So that we could rock with him even in the hardest of times. And in the hardest of times, we actually find the beauty and sweetness of his nearness, his presence.
His nearness isn't made clear by blessings or breakthroughs or promotion. His nearness is present in the lowest moments. It's in the desert. It's when we're left to our own devices and feel like we can't continue. That's where Jesus' grace is made most perfect.
The promise of his Holy Spirit, that he would dwell within us all the days of our lives, in high and in low, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, that he will not come and go but will stay, that means more to me than anything else.
So we surrender miracles. We surrender signs. We surrender certainty. We surrender answers and clarity. And we ask for faith that surpasses understanding. Not trusting because our circumstances are good, but trusting because he is good.
